Innovation:

The History of a Category

Benot Godin
385 rue Sherbrooke Est
Montral, Qubec
Canada H2X 1E3
benoit.godin@ucs.inrs.ca

Project on the Intellectual History of Innovation

Working Paper No. 1
2008

Project on the Intellectual History of Innovation

385 rue Sherbrooke Est, Montreal, Quebec H2X 1E3
Telephone: (514) 499-4074 Facsimile: (514) 499-4065
www.csiic.ca

Abstract

Innovation is everywhere. In the world of goods (technology) certainly, but also in

the realm of words. Innovation is discussed in scientific and technical literature, in
social sciences such as sociology, management and economics, and in the humanities
and arts. Innovation is also a central idea in the popular imaginary, in the media and
in public policy. How has innovation acquired such a central place in our society?
This paper looks at innovation as category, and suggests an outline for a genealogical
history. It identifies the concepts that have defined innovation through history, from
its very first meaning as novelty in the Middle Ages to the most recent
interpretations in sociology and economics. The paper suggests a genealogical
history of innovation through the following three concepts: Imitation Invention
Innovation.

We have a violent Fondness for change, and

greater Eagerness after Novelties, B.
Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, 1732.

Introduction
Innovation is everywhere. In the world of goods (technology) certainly, but also
in the realm of words: innovation is discussed in the scientific and technical
literature, in social sciences like history, sociology, management and economics,
and in the humanities and arts. Innovation is also a central idea in the popular
imaginary, in the media, in public policy and is part of everybodys vocabulary.
Briefly stated, innovation has become the emblem of the modern society, a
panacea for resolving many problems, and a phenomenon to be studied. As H.
Nowotny defines our epoch: it is a fascination and quest for innovation (Nowotny,
2008; 2006). The quest for innovation is so strong that some go so far as to
suggest that drugs like Ritalin and Adderall, used to treat psychiatric and
neurological conditions, should be prescribed to the healthy as a cognitive
enhancement technology for improving the innovative abilities of our species
(Greely et al., 2008).
This suggests three questions. First, why has innovation acquired such a central
place in our society or, put differently, where precisely does the idea of
innovation come from? To many, innovation is a relatively recent phenomenon
and its study more recent yet: innovation has acquired real importance in the
twentieth century. In point of fact, however, innovation has always existed. The
concept itself emerged centuries ago. This suggests a second question: why did
innovation come to be defined as technological innovation? Many people
spontaneously understand innovation to be technological innovation. The
literature itself takes this for granted. More often than not, studies on
technological innovation simply use the term innovation, although they are really
concerned with technological innovation. However, etymologically and
historically, the concept of innovation is much broader. How, when and by whom
did its meaning come to be restricted to technology? Third, why is innovation
generally understood, in many milieus, as commercialized innovation? It is hard
today to imagine technology without thinking of the market. One frequently hears

of innovations that are marketed by firms, but other types of innovation are either
rapidly forgotten or rarely discussed. By contrast, every individual is to a certain
extent innovative; artists are innovative, scientists are innovative, and so are
organizations in their day-to-day operations.
To answer these three questions, this paper looks at innovation as a category and
at its historical development. The paper is not a history of innovation itself (or
innovations), neither a contextual history. It looks rather at the representations of
innovation and the discourses held in the name of innovation, namely since the
term first appeared in the Middle Ages: how the public, innovators themselves,
and academics, and particularly the theories of the latter, have understood
innovation and talked about it.
This paper offers very preliminary ideas toward a genealogical history of the
category innovation. It identifies the concepts that have defined innovation
through history, and that have led to innovation as a central category of modern
society. It concentrates on the creative dimension of innovation. This dimension
got into innovation in the twentieth century. At the very beginning, innovation
was rather concerned with change, broadly understood, and had nothing to do
with creativity. Innovation as change will be dealt with in another paper (Godin,
2009b).
The paper is programmatic in the sense that it suggests a program of research or
outline for such a genealogical history, a history that remains to be written. In the
Archeology of Scientific Reason, M. Foucault asked Comment se fait-il que tel
concept soit apparu et nul autre sa place?, (Foucault, 1969: 39-40) that is,
under what conditions does a word come to mean what it signifies for us today?
To Foucault, a genealogy is a study of descent rather than origins: the details and
accidents, the forces and struggles that accompany every conceptual beginning
and its further solidification (Foucault, 1984).

In a recently-launched project on the intellectual history of innovation, of which

this paper is the first in a series, a genealogical study is framed through concepts,
their uses and their context.

As Q. Skinner suggested, words are markers of the

social understanding of the world, and the emergence of new words is a marker of
changes in societys values (Skinner, 1988). Put differently, a new word marks
the moment when [a] change had become obvious enough to need a term to
express it (Smith, 1925: 69-70).
Innovation, or the new, does not exist as such. It is constructed through the eyes
and through discourses. The genealogical study suggested here rests on six
elements. It starts with the study of words (or terms), their genesis and
transformation, and the cluster of concepts involved in speaking about innovation:
invention, ingenuity, imagination, creativity, etc. Second, it looks at the meanings
of the concepts developed. Such meaning usually goes from vagueness firstly as
a concept in construction where multiple terms are used, often interchangeably,
and then with an implicit definition to a relative stabilization. Third, discourses
held in the name of the concepts are identified. The discourses on innovation have
been generally of three kinds: innovation as a factor for change in society,
innovation as progress,

and innovation for its own sake, such as for personal

recognition, prestige or professional identity. Fourth, the values on which

innovation relies are analyzed, since they often involve an essential tension and
lead to the development of dichotomies, such as tradition versus innovation
(Kuhn, 1959; Shils, 1981). This part of the analysis calls on central categories of
thought in Western history. Fifth, the theories and conceptual models developed
to explain innovation are studied, from the very early psychological models to
more recent sociological and economic ones. The sixth and final element in the
genealogical history of innovation is the study of the context in which the

As J.G.A. Pocock suggested, before conducting a sociology of ideas, one has to understand
what the ideas were that were in use at a particular time, what in fact they said and implied, and
on what commonly accepted assumptions and methods they were based (Pocock, 1989: 106).
2
Progress in civilization (evolutionists, anthropology), in well-being (sociology), in growth
(economics), in knowledge and the control of nature (philosophy).

category emerged: economy (trade), politics (the courts), and culture

(expressiveness, awareness of history).
This paper advances three hypotheses in order to guide a genealogical history of
innovation as category. The first hypothesis starts with the idea that innovation is
about novelty (arising from human creativity), as etymology, dictionaries and
history suggest. As such, innovation is of any kind, not only material or
technological. In this sense, innovation as category has a very long history.
However, over time the conjunction of two factors gave preeminence to
technological and commercialized innovation in representations: 1) the culture of
things and its capitalistic corollary: industrial development through technology, 2)
academics, the study of technology, and the conceptual frameworks that followed
for policies in science and economic growth. In fact, there is a dialectics here
between reality and language. Events and changes in the world gave rise to new
categories; the latter in turn brought to light changes in the world and, in doing so,
contributed to these changes.
The second hypothesis is that the history of innovation as creativity is that of
three concepts (and their derivatives): Imitation Invention Innovation.
Certainly, a lot has been written on imitation (literary theory and art theory), as
well as invention (history, sociology, management and economics of technology).
But no one has ever brought the two concepts together in a genealogical history,
and neither has anyone looked at their contribution to the category innovation.
Through Western history, imitation and invention have been contrasted, or are in
tension. The dichotomy reaches its resolution with the idea of innovation in the
twentieth century, particularly the idea of innovation as process: invention and
imitation are two sequential steps in the process leading to innovation.
The third hypothesis is about innovation as a break with the past. Innovation and
the discourses on innovation serve to make sense of modern practices and values.
On the one hand, innovation represents continuity with the past. It is continuity in

the sense that innovation is about novelty, an idea that was present in many forms
before innovation took on a central place in representations, as we will see. It is
also continuity in the sense that innovation is, to many, concerned with
technological invention, which is a dominant understanding of what invention
came to mean over time. However, on the other hand innovation is a break with
the past in the sense that it suggests that invention per se is not enough. There has
to be use and adoption of the invention, namely innovation, in order for benefits
to accrue.
At this stage of the project, the first two parts of this paper (imitation, invention)
are based on secondary sources. The third part (innovation) is composed entirely
of original research and constitutes the core of the paper. It identifies the theories
on innovation proper, and their emergence over the twentieth century. The period
covered in this paper ends around 1970-90, which was when innovation
developed its current understanding in representations, and when the literature on
innovation exploded. 3
Imitation
Imitation is a concept of Greek origin. McKeon (1936) has documented how
Platos philosophy is entirely concerned with imitation and its many senses and
opposites: appearances (or images) versus reality; falsity versus truth. To
Plato, even physical objects are imitations, compared to God and true nature. But
it is through Aristotle that the concept of imitation got its main influence. To
Aristotle, (practical) arts imitate nature (mimesis). Such an understanding of art
gave rise to imitatio as the central problem of art, with pejorative overtones, then
to imitation as inspiration (Abrams, 1953; Nahm, 1956). As M. H. Abrams has
stated, the mimetic orientation was the most primitive aesthetic theory (Abrams,

The author wants to thank the following colleagues for comments on a first draft of this paper:
Irwin Feller, Paul Forman, Denise Lemieux, Pamela Long, Pierre Lucier, Christine Macleod,
Reijo Miettinen, Helga Nowotny, Jean-Jacques Salomon.

1953: 8). 4 Art imitates the world of appearance. The artist extracts the form of
the natural world and imposes it upon an artificial medium (Abrams, 1953: 11). In
fact, wherever the Renaissance theorist turned, he usually found the concept of
invention somehow subordinated to the imitation of nature (Kushner, 1980: 144).
5

However, according to most theories, imitation is only instrumental toward

producing effects (Abrams, 1953: 14). In their quest for social status, artists
debated for centuries on how to distance themselves from a conception of their
work as mere copying. As E. T. Bannet suggested recently, imitation is a literary
mechanism for the production of difference (Bannet, 2005). Until the mideighteenth century, imitation was presented as a positive practice, not one that
was distrusted or pejorative. To rhetoricians, imitation is a method for teaching
(Clark, 1951). To Renaissance artists, imitation certainly makes use of nature as
model, or exemplar. However, it is not slavish or mechanical imitation, but
selective borrowing and creative copying. Similarly, while humanist writers in the
Renaissance make use of past authors (antiquity) as models, it is aemulatio, and
the writer enriches the tradition. In fact, the artist, the poet and the writer in the
Renaissance were not yet being judged for originality (Force, 2005; Cole, 1995;
Wittkover, 1965), but rather for interpretation. There was little sense of copyright
although accusations of plagiarism abounded (Hathaway, 1989; White, 1935).
And so it is with science and arts. To Francis Bacon, one comes closer to real
knowledge of nature by imitating nature. As he described his experimental
method in Magna Instauratio: these things are quite new; totally new (...): and
yet they are copied from a very ancient model, the world itself and the nature of

On the representation of art before the Greek theory of mimesis art as presentification of
the divine rather than a human creative act , see Vernant and Zeitlin (1991).
5
On the different of meaning of imitation of nature in art, see Lovejoy (1927) and Lovejoy and
Boas (1935). In history, the naturalist presumption is a widespread idea: what humans do, in
literature, arts, crafts and science is a (continuation or) perfection of nature (Close, 1969). To
many, above all philosophers, nature is generally considered as more primitive and more
authentic. Nature functions as a cultural value and social norm. Nature has a moral authority
(Bensaude-Vincent and Newman, 2007; Daston and Vidal, 2004).

10

things and of the mind.

In the world of trade and goods, imitation is also

positively appreciated. M. Berg and H. Clifford have documented how imitations

served as substitutes for imported commodities in eighteenth-century Britain
(Berg, 1999; Clifford, 1999). Imitation was a way to give access to luxury goods
(decorative goods, clothing, household wares) to the people, through semiluxuries. In the case of the decorative arts over the same period, R. Benhamou
has documented the contribution of imitation to lowering the costs of original
products (Benhamou, 1991). Briefly stated, imitation is taken for granted and is a
common practice. Imitation brings advantages to the people; it represents
economic opportunity.
In more recent history, R. R. Nelson and S. G. Winter (1982), in a classic of the
literature on technological innovation, suggested imitation as one of two strategies
available to firms, the other being innovation. As early as 1966, T. Levitt from
Harvard Business School suggested the same idea: because no single company
can afford even to try to be first in everything in its field, a company is
compelled to look to imitation as one of its survival and growth strategies
(Levitt, 1966: 65). In fact, to Levitt the greatest flow of newness is not
innovation at all. Rather, it is imitation. He was referring to the fact that when
competitors in the same industry subsequently copy the innovator [a given firm
or industry which has produced something that has never been seen before], even
though it is something new for them, then it is not innovation, it is imitation
(Levitt, 1966: 63). A company creates its own imitative equivalents of the
innovative products created by others.
Not only, then, is imitation a good practice, but imitation has often been portrayed
as being invention itself. The view in the Middle Ages of the work of artisans is
that of art learned by imitating nature, but in so doing, the artisan changes nature,
as claimed by the alchemists (Newman, 1989). Equally, in Renaissance literary

On Bacons description of his utopian laboratory (Salomons house) as imitation of nature, see
his description of instruments in New Atlantis (1627).

11

theory and visual arts, one finds recurrent descriptions of imitation as rediscovery
of the old, as something new to copy, as something never seen before. Here,
the charge of lies [imitation] is turned to an argument for the truth of poetic
imagination (Rossky, 1958: 69). An argument frequently evoked is that imitation
requires work, experimentation, judgment and imagination. All these descriptions
in literature, arts and crafts generally refer to an idea that has been very influential
among many authors in defining invention, and subsequently innovation, as we
will observe below: that of combination. Imitation is invention because, when
combining elements from nature, it combines the best of them, and by so doing
improves nature. Combination creates a whole that is more perfect than nature;
it is as nature ought to be (Wittkower, 1965: 148). Equally, in combining previous
schools of thought, the combination surpasses the work of past authors.
Compilatio, a wide literary activity which encompassed various genres in the
Middle Ages (and after), is combination of others material into a new work, a
unio (Hathaway, 1989: 41).
But lets continue with imitation as invention in other areas. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, patents (and their precursors in the fifteenth century: letters
and privileges) were not granted to inventors, as they are today, but to importers
of existing inventions, as a way to develop the local economy (Macleod, 1988;
Popplow, 1998; Hilaire-Perez, 2000). They were accompanied by laws restricting
the mobility of artisans who possessed unique skills or techniques (Epstein,
1988). In addition, premiums and prizes were awarded by societies of arts to
imitations of existing foreign goods (Berg, 1999). Similarly, in consumer goods of
eighteenth-century Britain, imitation was perceived as invention because it
resulted in new commodities, introduced improvements in quality (design), and
brought diversity and variety (Berg, 1999; 2002: Clifford, 1999; Benhamou,
1991). Due to a culture of taste, the goods or commodities and their aesthetic
qualities evoke the distinctive and the exotic, but also the latest technology and
modernity.

12

Now, if we turn to the twentieth century, we clearly observe that imitation gave
rise to, and was often used as a term for, diffusion. As I discuss below,
contemporary theories on innovation now include diffusion (or use) as a step in
the innovation process. In this process, diffusion is really imitation, and the word
appears in early theories, from the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde in the 1890s
to the economic literature on technological innovation in the 1980s. As a matter of
fact, in the sociological literature of the 1940-60s, an innovator is not an inventor
but a user, defined as to time: the first user of an invention. Equally, imitation
gave rise to the idea of adoption as innovation itself: in recent theories on and
measurements of technological innovation, adopting an existing technology is a
behaviour considered just as innovative as inventing (OECD, 2005), and not as
mere imitation, as Levitt has suggested.

As F. Redlich put it, while not

genuine (or primary) innovation, innovation by imitation is nevertheless

(derivative and subjective) innovation, as opposed to copying (Redlich, 1951).
In summary, imitation has rarely been separated from invention. To many,
imitation has close links to invention, and even constitutes invention itself.
However, with time imitation came to be contrasted to invention. Starting from
the mid-eighteenth century, imitation was regarded as mere copying, while
originality became the criterion for real invention.
Invention
Invention is a term that comes from rhetoric. In classical rhetoric, invention was
the first of five divisions of the rhetorical art. Invention is composed of guidelines
to help speakers find and elaborate language. In De Inventione, Cicero (106-43
BC) defined invention as the discovery of valid or seemingly valid arguments to
render ones cause probable. However, in the history of rhetoric, invention as so

See also the much cited concept absorptive capacities: the capacity of a firm to assimilate and
apply (imitate) other firms innovations (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990).

13

conceived has been eclipsed by one or more of the four other divisions
(arrangement, style, memory and delivery).
Invention as a term in other domains really came to be used in the mid-fourteenth
century as finding or discovery, namely with regard to knowledge, or science
(knowing). It came to be applied to making as well, in poetry (literary criticism),
then in visual arts. From the sixteenth century, invention was used more and more
to apply to newly-created things (artifacts). Lets look at the history of this
evolution.
From late medieval Europe, the idea of invention spread everywhere, to different
degrees and under different terms. A whole cluster of words is used to name the
new, as the list below indicates. Certainly, as M. Kemp has noted, in the
Renaissance, there was no unanimity in usage of divino, ingegno, fantasia,
immaginazione and invenzione (Kemp, 1977: 397). Equally, the term or terms
associated with a specific field in the following list are not exclusive to that field,
but are those that came to gain preeminence in that field (for a complete list of the
vocabulary, see the Appendix). One thing is clear: in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, the idea of novelty is everywhere and becomes very much
a (positive) cultural value:
-

Philosophy: praxis 8

Literary theory and visual arts: imagination, originality, creation

Arts and crafts (engineering): ingenium, invention

(Natural Philosophy and) science: discovery, experiment, scientific change

History: change, revolution, progress

Evolutionists: 9 growth, development, evolution, variation, mutation

In philosophy, praxis has not really been theorized because of the emphasis on mind (Arendt,
1968; Lobkowic, 1957). It slowly begins to be become an issue, quite imperfectly according to
many, with expressiveness (J. G. Herder), utilitarianism (free will), existentialism (life, will,
consciousness), pragmatism (experience, inquiry), and the philosophy of action (Bernstein, 1971).
9
Following Bowler (1983), I group together under evolutionists: early geology, early
paleontology, natural history, and biology.

14

Anthropology: culture (or cultural) change

Sociology: action, social change

Psychology: attitude change; creativity

Management and politics: organizational change

Economics: entrepreneurship, technological change, innovation

Nowhere is the idea of novelty more present than in science. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, science was frequently discussed as an active search or
hunt (venatio), a very old metaphor (Eamon, 1994; Hadot, 2004). The scientific
literature of the seventeenth century is full of the term new, as L. Thorndike has
documented (Thorndike, 1957), as well as the term revolution (Cohen, 1985). 10
Equally, the idea of progress is a major one during the Renaissance, the
Enlightenment and subsequently (Bury, 1932; Zilsel, 1945; Sarton, 1962; Rossi,
1970: 63-99; Crombie, 1975; Bock, 1978; Nisbet, 1980; Marx, 1987; Spadafora,
1990).
Change became a preoccupation of study in many emerging scientific disciplines,
from sociology (A. Comte, H. Spencer) and history (A. Ferguson) to natural
philosophy, or the sciences. Geologists, natural historians and biologists from the
eighteenth century are the men of science who have taken change most
seriously. Certainly, at that time, change as the natural process for the
development of life on earth was seen as preordained, even through the nineteenth
century: God is the designer of all things and their development; the linear chain
of being is constructed as leading invariably to man (Lovejoy, 1936). But
evolutionists, since before Darwin, have discussed change as either linear, or
cyclical or catastrophic (in the case of the earth formation), and as spontaneous
generation and degeneration, then natural selection (in the case of biological
species) (Bowler, 1983; 1993). The evolutionists also developed influential
sequential theories of how life and societies evolve (life-cycle theories), based on

15

the model of the embryo (birth, growth, maturity). Evolution, development,

variation and mutation are only some of the key terms used here.
Whatever its name, the new is not without its opponents. The Querelle between
the ancients and the moderns, in literature and philosophy but also in science and
education, is that between imitating (and surpassing) the ancients versus a totally
new enterprise (Jones, 1936). This is perhaps the first systematic debate in history
about the new as opposed to tradition. In science, there is also the opposition with
religion. An argument frequently evoked here is that of minimizing novelty, and
portraying science as new, but not so new: the purpose of scientific knowledge
is to reveal the nature God has created; science talks about what is real, not magic
or superstition. However, even among scientists themselves, scientific invention is
resisted (Cohen, 1952; Barber, 1961; Kuhn, 1962; 1963). As with imitation,
invention is perceived in different ways. It is often distrusted and qualified as
esoteric. Similarly, hypothesis, as coming from the imagination and as the major
faculty behind scientific invention but a source of error for the rationalists, is said
to be in need of control, namely a method, as Bacon suggests (Park, 1984).

11

Otherwise it leads to excesses, delusions and distortions, or to rhetoric and

eloquence.
The defenders of invention often have an ideological aim: to distinguish oneself
(identity) and to justify ones activities (image of scientists, inventors and
writers), for purposes of patronage, among other things. Hence, the construction
of oppositions portraying tradition and the like as static (transmission from
generation to generation; irrational and arbitrary) versus invention and the like as
cumulative and progressive. 12

10

Friedman and Karlsson have recently computed the exponential use of the word novel in titles
of the current scientific literature, and have concluded: in the morning hours of 7 February 2020
all science will be novel (Friedman and Karlsson, 1997).
11
On the role of hypothesis (imagination) in science, see Laudan (1981), Park, Daston and Galison
(1984).
12
Frequently heard oppositions are: Good versus bad imagination; imitation versus originality;
science versus art; knowing versus imagining; objectivity versus subjectivity; books versus

16

Over time, invention in science came to share the vocabulary of writers with the
term discovery. In fact, for some time, invention meant finding as well as
making, and was applied without qualification to both activities. Discovery also
meant both. Later, a distinction was made between the two concepts: discovery
referred to facts or things that already exist out there and that one finds out, while
invention combines and makes new things, including scientific theories (Wyman,
1929; Kneale, 1955). However, since social constructivism (Hacking, 1999), the
term construction seems to be the preferred term, applying to both scientific
discoveries and technological inventions.
Literature and visual arts are other fields where the idea of novelty is widespread.
Contrary to science, with its emphasis on facts and method and its negative
assessment of imagination (Southgate, 1992), the power of imagination is
rehabilitated. In fact, literary theory and visual arts (painting, sculpture) in the
Renaissance adapted invention from the literature on rhetoric (then from poetry)
to a psychological process of imagination (Lee, 1940; Bundy, 1930; Spencer,
1957; Bond, 1935; 1937; Rossky, 1958). Although imagination was, as in science,
portrayed for a time as in need of control, namely judgment and rules (Costa
Lima, 1988), the real boundary work of the artist is against imitation: imitation (as
combination) is stigmatized as eclectici. Real art is free and creative imagination
(Cassirer, 1932: chapter 7; Abrams, 1953; Williams, 1961; Engell, 1981; Mason,
2003). The passive role (reproducing) of imagination in medieval usage (as
opposed to fantasy which combines) turned into an active faculty with the
Romantics. Originality came to define the artist (Mann, 1939; Mortier, 1982;
Quint, 1983; McFarland, 1985), and the metaphor of creation already present in
Greek mythology (Prometheus) entered the vocabulary (Nahm, 1947, 1956;
Tigerstadt, 1968; Mason, 1988). Certainly, originality, as with imitation and
invention, carries negative connotations as well. Until the nineteenth century, in

observation; hypotheses versus data; tradition versus modernity; good versus bad effects of
technology (benefits versus disasters).

17

social usage for example, an original person was bizarre, eccentric, ridiculed.

13

However, originality with the following two meanings gained credence over time.
Originality means origin, or source (authorship), and this meaning would be
influential, as discussed below, in the case of technological invention. It also
means a distinctive quality of work, or novelty, unlike the imitation of the
ancients, for example. As such, originality came to characterize the genius, an
important figure in the Renaissance and to the Romantic authors. Genius as a
concept has a long history. First defined as spirit (which gave inspiration), it came
to mean innate talent or ability (ingenium), then a person with superior creative
powers, to which the Romantic conception has added the idea that genius defies
rational analysis (Smith, 1925; Zilsel, 1926; Tonelli and Wittkower, 1968-70;
Murray, 1989; Goodey, 2004).
Ingenuity was also a key concept for the artisan from the Middle Ages onward. In
fact, the artisan, first of all alchemists, through their art created new things in their
opinion, and for the first time made art a creative force rather than only an
imitative entity or mirror-like representation (Newman, 2004).

14

Equally, in

Renaissance painters, ceramists and sculptors really thought they were creating
new things, not only practicing an imitative art (Smith, 2004). This creative power
over nature gave rise to the figure of the inventor, a genius or hero who, as to
scientists and artists, was not without opponents. As a matter of fact, it took time
for inventors to be admitted to the pantheon of great men. Up to the beginning of
the nineteenth century, and again after the commercialization of technological
inventions on a large scale at the end of this same century, the inventor was
anonymous. As C. MacLeod has discussed for Great Britain: inventors were
merely the agents of providence in discovering inventions in accordance with
the divine plan. The inventor was simply born at the right time and place, and was

13

On a very interesting sociological study of originality versus convention, see N. Elias on

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Elias, 1993).
14
On the contribution of magic and alchemy (and the books of secrets: receipts, formulas,
instructions, experiments as tests, or trials) to the status of the arts and artisans, see White (1975),
Newman (2004; 1989); Eamon (1994).

18

the last link in a causal chain (Macleod, 1996; 2006; 2007 Macleod and Tann,
2007; Macleod and Nuvolari, 2006).
While the idea of invention came to share its place with discovery in science
(Branigan, 1981), and with imagination in literature and visual arts (Engell, 1981;
Mason, 2003), it gradually and increasingly came to be identified preeminently
with mechanical or technological invention, first of all in crafts and arts such as
architecture, navigation, metallurgy and the military. Early in the Renaissance, the
term invention was applied to ingenious things like machines, artifices, devices,
engines, methods, for which a whole literature developed treatises, histories
and encyclopedias (Rossi, 1970; Long, 2001) and for which the word
technology subsequently became the category.

15

In the nineteenth century,

engineering and works on bridges, tunnels and railways, then electrical systems
add important inventions to the technological landscape (Chandler, 1977; 1990;
Beniger, 1986; Hughes, 1983).
This alignment of the term invention with technological invention was helped by
the conventionalization, or institutionalization, of technological invention through
privileges and patent laws from the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries onward
(Macleod, 1988; Cooper, 1991a; Popplow, 1998; Hilaire-Perez, 2000). That
invention as idea is itself an invention a social invention is now well admitted.
A scientific theory is invention because a system for attributing authorship to an
individual exists, namely the scientific publication. The scientific publication
developed, in fact, as a mean to resolve priority disputes (Merton, 1957; 1961;
Branigan, 1981; Gross, 1989; Iliffe, 1992; Biagioli and Galison, 2003). Similarly,
the patent system is the institutional mechanism for deciding what a technological
invention is and who owns it (Rae, 1967; Macleod, 1988). As anthropologist O. T.
Mason, curator at the US National Museum, put it in 1895: The public

15

On the history of the term technology, from technique to artifact, see: Morre (1966), Guillerme
and Sebestik (1968), Salomon (1984), Frison (1992; 1993), Marx (1994; 1997), Schatzberg
(2006).

19

recognition and reward of invention may itself be said to have been invented
(Mason, 1895: 15).
It is through the patent system as institution that the criteria for a technological
objects identity are negociated and invention is defined (Cooper, 1991b;
Cambrosio et al., 1990): in fact, all technological inventions are defined here,
whether it is patented or not. Ever since the first modern patent laws in the late
eighteenth century, three criteria have characterized technological invention
(Lubar, 1990). First, originality as to quality of work, or novelty. Applications are
examined for novelty before a patent is granted. Gone is the idea of imitation:
transformations and improvements to existing goods are more and more difficult
to patent. Originality is the norm. A technological invention, to qualify as such,
has to be substantially new. With time, what constitutes novelty is increasingly
settled through the judicial system, which arbitrates competing claims. The
second criterion is originality as to origin, or priority. Here, patents
institutionalized the then-emerging idea of intellectual property (authorship),
whose roots date from the Middle Ages (Long, 2001). Patent laws add property
rights to inventions.

16

The third criteria suggested for the patented invention is

utility, and this is crucial for understanding invention as technological invention.

E. Zilsel, in his seminal study on the idea of genius, documented a shift in the idea
of genius during the Renaissance. From being applied to the output of the artist,
genius became something attributed to the artist as person, a subjectivization of
the idea (Zilsel, 1926). However, in the larger context of innovation, as discussed
in this paper, it is the opposite which is observed. As patents attest, the qualities
previously attributed to the genius or artist (like originality) become those
attributed to the commodity.

16

Copyright laws have followed a similar but distinct development. Early privileges for printed
editions of books were basically for printers, not authors. Rights to writers developed after patent
laws. However, and contrary to patents, originality is a requirement of copyright only in the sense
that it originates in the copyright claimant, not that it is original in the sense of novelty.

20

Over time, technological invention obtained a relative monopoly in the

vocabulary of invention because of the culture of things, or material culture
and patents are witness to this phenomenon. The origins of this culture goes back
to the Renaissance: due to commercial exchanges, exploration and travel (Cook,
2007; Smith and Findlen, 2002), natural and artificial objects have been what is
valued in arts, science, and real life. This is not to say that technical invention had
no opponents, quite the contrary. Before the ninetieth century, technical invention
commonly carried negative connotations, because of the many technical,
managerial and financial difficulties of projects and projectors (Godin, 2009b).
Another aspect of this opposition is the resistance to technology in the workplace.
From the industrial revolution in Great Britain to the debate on technological
unemployment and displacement in the United States in the 1930s, many
questioned the benefits of machines, and refused, often violently, the introduction
of new processes in industry (Stern, 1937; Pearson, 1979; Berg, 1980; Randall,
1986; Bix, 2000).
Over time, the culture of things has developed and owes its existence to many
factors. One such factor is the consumer revolution (Berg and Clifford, 1999;
Thirsk, 1979): the sixteenth century and after brought new consumer goods to the
people. These new goods were a response to expressed needs for a better
existence, an old motive, as L. Dresbeck (1979) and L. White (1971) have
discussed with respect to the Middle Ages, but also in response to taste (a moral
idea, then an aesthetic one), and its manifestation in luxuries and semi-luxuries as
novelties (Berg, 1999). The emergence of economic thought in the seventeenth
century, with its emphasis on gain, wealth and material prosperity, is witness to
this phenomenon (Dumont, 1977). A second factor is what came to be called the
industrial revolution and the use of technologies in industrial processes
(Toynbee, 1884; Ashton, 1948; Hudson, 1992; Coleman, 1992; Hardy, 2006).
Then, a third revolution, or innovation, occurred at the end of the nineteenth
century and the beginning of the twentieth century: (large) firms began setting up
research laboratories as a way to accelerate industrial development (US National

21

Research Council, 1941; Noble, 1977). As A.N. Whitehead put it long ago, the
greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of
invention. Men have invented a method for (systematic and cumulative)
invention (Whitehead, 1925: 120; see also Lippman, 1934). By 1920, there were
approximately 300 industrial research laboratories in the United States alone, and
twenty five years later industrial research accounted for more than two-thirds of
national expenditures devoted to research and development (R&D) in many
countries. Along with the patent system discussed above, the development of
industries based on the research laboratory and the commercialization of
technological inventions on a large scale were major factors contributing to a
conception of invention as technological invention.
Briefly stated, technological inventions got increased attention because they have
utilitarian value (Long, 2001; Hilaire-Perez, 2000; Macleod, 1988) as opposed
or contrasted to Ancient knowledge, as it was often said from Bacon onward.
They contribute to politics: technology and arts, such as painting, sculpture, and
architecture, serve as political and military power, and as manifestations of power
(displays of grandeur, wealth and magnificence). They also contribute to social
progress. From the medieval guilds (Epstein, 1988) to the mercantilists (Johnson,
1930), from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century, the literature is full of
mentions of progress and utility from technological inventions with regard to
contributing to character (virtue) of the individual, to social well-being, and to
civilization. Finally, technological inventions as power over nature serve
commerce, trade and manufacturing activities seen positively at the time, as A.
O. Hirshman (1977) has documented. From the nineteenth century onward, these
beliefs led to narratives on modernity and technologies from everyone: from
ordinary people to intellectuals (Marx, 1964; Kasson, 1976; Nye, 1997; 2003;
Noble, 1998; Hard and Jamison, 1998; Rieger, 2005).
Things and utility have a place in science too. First, the new sciences of the
seventeenth century increasingly relied on the study of objects of nature.

22

Observation, namely the collection of objects and the compilation of data, and
measurement, with techniques or technologies as instruments, are the keywords
here. There is a rehabilitation of curiosity, which was a vice to Christian writers
like Augustine (Eamon: 1994 58-66, 301-318) and others before him, but which
became a quality of the virtuoso, that is, the cultivated gentleman (Houghton,
1942), giving rise to one of the most central concepts of science, that of
objectivity (Harrison, 2001; Daston, 1995).

17

Things like marvels, wonders,

rarities and exotics (Daston and Park, 1998) also find a place in cabinets of
curiosities, as precursors to museums (Findlen, 1994; Impey and MacGregor,
1985).
Second, there are also calls, for which F. Bacon is the main exponent, for more
useful knowledge in science, namely for the mechanical arts and artificial objects.
18

To Bacon, the real and legitimate goal of the sciences is the endowment of the

human life with new inventions and riches (Novum Organum, 1620: aphorism
no. 81). Bacon is followed by R. Boyle as one of the most serious defenders of his
views, and by the scientific academies (Briggs, 1991; Ochs, 1985).

19

That mixed

mathematics and mechanical arts have utility, that machine technology benefits
the public and industries becomes an argument for the promotion of science and
for securing patronage (Cochrane, 1956; Keller, 1972; Stewart, 1998; 1992).
Innovation
Novation is a term that first appeared in law in the thirteenth century. It meant
renewing an obligation by changing a contract for a new debtor. The term was
rarely used in the various arts and sciences before the twentieth century
17

There is very good literature on the history of objectivity from L. Daston, P. Galison, S.
Schaeffer and S. Shapin (see also Poovey, 1998; Shapiro, 2000). From this literature, one could
develop a genealogical history of objectivity in three steps as follows: curiosity matters of fact
objectivity.
18
The fascination with machines entered science very early, via the mechanical philosophy. The
metaphor of the clock for explaining different aspects of nature is one of the most well-known
examples in the scientific literature. On the analogy of knowing to making (machines), see
Crombie (1994: chapter 14).

23

although new was, as mentioned above. Create and invent were preferred words
for mans productive power and creative abilities. N. Machiavelli (The Prince,
1513) and F. Bacon (Of Innovations, 1625) are among the very few individuals
having devoted early pages to innovation, using the term as such, and to the
resistance of people to innovation.

20

There has also been a controversy on

innovation, the first of its kind, in religion in mid-seventeenth century England

(Godin, 2009b). All these writings and debates were concerned with innovation as
change, not creativity.
In fact, as with imitation and invention, innovation was pejorative for a while.
Until the eighteenth century, a novator was still a suspicious person, one to be
mistrusted. Before the twentieth century, there had been two episodes in history
where innovation was opposed. The first was in political and religious matters.
Because of tradition, political change was negatively received, and because of
orthodoxy, innovation was considered heresy; thereafter innovation was identified
with the introduction of anything deviant in political affairs and in the Church.
The second episode was during the eighteenth century, when inventors started
making money from their inventions. Projectors, as the innovators were then
called, became objects of satire by many authors because of insufficient
science, bad management and fraud.
In this section, I document how innovation gradually came to resolve the tension
between imitation and invention, at least at the theoretical level. Until innovation
took on a central place in theories on social and economic change, imitation and
invention (under different terms, as discussed above) were seen as opposites, as
was the case in social practices. In the eighteenth century, for example, originality
was contrasted to copying and plagiarism (imitation) in authorship (Woodmansee,
1984; Long, 2001). Equally, under patent laws, property (of the first inventor)
gave rise to accusations of theft (imitation) (Macleod, 1988; Hilaire-Perez, 2000).
19

One should also include here the reformers of learning like S. Hartlib, J. Dury, W. Petty and J.
Evelyn in England (Houghton, 1957; Jones, 1936).

24

Similarly, the very first theories on innovation explicitly contrasted imitation to

invention. While previous theories of invention were of a psychological kind
and focused on inspiration, imagination and genius (Bundy, 1927), the end of the
nineteenth century saw the emergence of new theories for explaining novelty, and
these were of a social kind. The first such theories arose in anthropology.
Anthropology made very few uses of the term innovation. Innovation was
nevertheless what anthropologists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century studied as culture change: changes in culture traits, but also inventions in
agriculture, trade, social and political organizations (law, customs, religion,
family) and technology. It is impossible to examine all of the voluminous
literature produced on culture change in this paper; neither is it possible to
analyze to what extent the theories that were produced really studied change as a
process. However, one debate deserves mention here. Many anthropologists
framed the discussion in terms of invention versus diffusion (as imitation) to
explain stages of civilization. This gave rise to what came to be called the
diffusion controversy (Smith et al., 1927). On one side were evolutionists, to
whom invention stems from multiple centers and occurs independently in
different cultures. Parallel inventions, as they were called, reflect the psychic
unity of human nature, and differences in culture reflect steps of the same process,
or varying speeds of evolution.

21

Primitives were considered to be at an arrested

stage of development. An associated discussion here was whether there was

convergence between cultures, or divergence. 22

20

On Bacon and novelty, see Whitney (1986). On Machiavelli and innovation, see Pocock (1975).
Precursors on parallel inventions are evolutionists in archeology (G. de Mortillet) and
paleontology (multiple centers, discontinuous invention: R. Owen, G. S. Mivart, H. F. Osborn),
historians (W. Robertson on parallel invention, but at different rates), and philologists.
22
Convergence refers to things originally different that have become the same, and divergence to
things originally the same that have become different. For the first discussion of the principle of
limited possibilities of divergence, see Goldenweiser (1913).
21

25

At the opposite end were diffusionists, to whom man is essentially uninventive. 23

Culture emerges from one center, then diffuses through borrowings, migrations
and invasions.

24

This gave rise to a whole literature on culture areas (culture

circles in Germany), where diffusion is due to geographic contiguity (O. T.

Mason, G. Holmes, A. L. Kroeber and C. Wissler).
Until about the mid-twentieth century, evolutionism was the framework
anthropologists used to study culture change. Then acculturation, as the study of
cultural change resulting from contacts between different cultures, developed
(Redfield et al., 1936; Barnett et al., 1954). Anthropologists stopped looking at
diffusion as mere imitation contrasted to invention: diffusion is inventive
adaptation. Among anthropologists, one author stands apart: H. G. Barnett
(Godin, 2009a). Barnett developed a comprehensive theory of innovation, defined
as any thought, behavior, or thing that is new because it is qualitatively different
from existing forms (Barnett, 1953: 7). To Barnett, everyone is an innovator, but
he could not find a precise and thoroughgoing analysis of how innovation occurs
in the literature. Most studies, he said, concentrated on technological invention
and his use of the term innovation is motivated by the desire to eliminate this bias.
From ethnological researches in ethnic groups and religious cults, he developed
such a theory. However, Barnett had no followers among anthropologists. We
have to turn to sociologists, and then economists, to find the systematic
development of studies on innovation.
The first theory of innovation comes from the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde in
the late nineteenth century (Tarde, 1890; 1895; 1898; 1902). Tardes sociology
distinguished statics from dynamics,

25

and was interested in explaining social

23

According to M. Harris (1968), diffusionists were responsible for the invention/diffusion

dichotomy in anthropology, while evolutionists (like E. B. Tylor and L. H. Morgan) were said to
admit both invention and diffusion. To J. Stewart, there are three dichotomies in the debate:
unilinear/multilinear evolution, invention/diffusion, parallel invention/convergence (Stewart,
1955).
24
Precursors to diffusionism are evolutionists in biogeography (one center, then migration: A. R.
Wallace and J. D. Hooker), and biology (C. Darwin and the common ancestor to men).
25
With this distinction, Tarde foreshadowed J.A. Schumpeter in economics.

26

change (or social evolution): grammar, language, religion, law, constitution,

economic regime, industry and arts. Tarde made widespread use of the term
innovation (and novation) as novelty, but with no explicit definition. In fact, he
used a whole cluster of terms to discuss social changes: invention, ingenuity,
novelty, creation, originality, imagination, discovery and initiative.
Tardes theory of innovation was threefold: invention opposition imitation.
26

Inventions give rise to imitation imitations of a limited number of inventions,

because of the opposition or competition between the new and the old inventions.
27

The success of an invention (i.e.: imitation) depends on other inventions (or

opposition between inventions) and social factors. To Tarde, invention is the

combination of previous or elementary inventions (i.e.: imitation). Invention
comes from individuals (not necessarily great men), and is socially influenced. To
Tarde, invention is the driving force of society, but society is mainly imitative:
custom, fashion, sympathy, obedience and education. Imitation is to society what
heredity is to biology, and vibration to electricity.
One had to wait for E. M. Rogers (1962) for other such broad theories of
innovation in sociology. As to praxis in philosophy, and culture change in
anthropology, the extent to which sociologists have really studied change is a
matter of debate. Certainly, social change has been studied in sociology, from A.
Comte, H. Spencer, P. Sorokin and their grand stages theories based on the lifecycle metaphor, then T. Parsons, 28 then studies like social movements as a source
of social change, or the study of development in developing countries (Watson,
1953; Boskoff, 1957; Nisbet, 1969; Eisenstadt, 1973). However, to many critics
over time sociologists have been concerned with imitation (as socialization) rather

26

The French sociologist A. Espinas (1897), his praxeology and his discussion on animal societies
(ants) was a source for Tardes model of individual initiative followed by imitation.
27
On Tardes theory of opposition, see Tarde (1897).
28
To Parsons, the social sciences may be all classified as sciences of action. However, a theory
of social change is not possible in the present stage of knowledge (Parsons, 1951: 486).

27

than with creative action (Hield, 1954; Joas, 1996; Berk and Galvan, 2009).
The study of individual creativity was left to psychology.

30

29

Be it as it may, one

thing is sure: sociologists with an interest in technology, to whom we now turn,

took change seriously.
What the subsequent theories of innovation have done is put an end to the contrast
between imitation and invention. From the 1920s onward, invention came to be
understood as a process (both diachronic and synchronic). Theories now combine
invention and imitation in a sequence, that is, a linear model: invention is
followed by imitation. The first such theories came from sociologists (Godin,
2009e). The Americans W. F. Ogburn and S. C. Gilfillan were forerunners, but in
fact rehearsed many arguments of the nineteenth century (McGee, 1995; Macleod,
2007: chapter 6 and 9). Both positioned themselves against the views of
anthropology and its theories of evolution by stages, because the achievements
have not been up to the high hopes and have been disproved (Ogburn, 1922: 57),
and against great men theories in philosophy and history. To Gilfillan, the great
man or genius as hero is a mythology for historical origin to increase the
cohesion of the group and its loyalty to its living leaders (Gilfillan, 1935: 77-78).
31

Ogburn and Gilfillan started looking at inventions, above all technological

inventions, as causes of cultural change or social change (social organizations and
29

For example, to R.K. Merton innovation (as rejection of institutional means to social goals or
norms) is (one of four types of) deviant behavior. See R.K. Merton (1938). On a refinement of
Mertons thesis and a more constructive view of innovation, see Dubin (1959). H. Joas (1996)
argues that there has been no real theory of creativity in sociology. He is right. To many
sociologists, action is rationality rather than creativity. Creativity is non-rational: a residual, a
deviation. But from a genealogical perspective, the authors and the theories Joas discusses
(Durkheim, Weber, Tonnies, Simmel, Parsons) are steps or precursors, not metaphors as he
called them, and should be studied in a genealogical history of innovation.
30
Following N. Machiavelli, W. Pareto has contrasted types of individual as to whether they are
innovative (foxes) or conservative (lions) (Pareto, 1935). However, he did not devoted analyses to
the process of innovation itself.
31
The role of genius in civilization was an idea widely debated in philosophy (W. James versus G.
Allen), in history (T. Carlyle versus the Spencerians, the Hegelians and the Marxists), in science
(F. Galton on heredity versus A. de Candolle), and Tarde has previously positioned himself on the
question. In anthropology, it was discussed in terms of great civilizations and the diffusion of
culture to other parts of the world.

28

behaviours).

32

To Ogburn, the use of material things is a very important part of

the culture of any people (Ogburn, 1922: 4). What he observed was the growth
and acceleration of material culture, as would be documented quantitatively by
American sociologist H. Hart from the 1930s to the 1960s (Hart, 1931; 1957;
1959), and its enormous consequences on society, or social change, a field he
studied for over thirty years. Ogburn developed the concept of the cultural lag to
account for this process. There is an increasing lag between the material culture
(technology) and the rest of culture (adaptive culture) due to inertia and lack of
social adaptation. Hence the need for control and adjustment, forecasting and
planning.
To the sociologists, technological invention is a combination of prior art and
ideas, and a complex of diverse elements: design, science, material, method,
capital, skill and management (Gilfillan, 1935: 6). It is a social process rather than
an individual one. Certainly without the inventor there can be no inventions
(Gilfillan, 1935: 78), but the inventors are not the only individuals responsible
for invention (Gilfillan, 1935: 81). Social forces like demographic (race) and
geographic factors, and cultural heritage play a part. Secondly, technological
invention is social in a second sense: it is cumulative (or evolutionary), namely
the result of accumulation and accretion of minor details, modifications,
perfectings, and minute additions over centuries, rather than a one-step creation
(Gilfillan, 1935: 3).

33

Finally, technological invention is social in a third sense: it

is more and more systematic. It comes from organized research laboratories

specifically dedicated to this end. Recalling industrialists discourses of the time,
the sociologists observed a movement from the independent inventor to organized
research in industrial laboratories (Gilfillan, 1935: 52-54, 63; Hart, 1931: 552562).

32

To anthropologists, technology is rather an effect (a sign of civilization) to be explained.

In sociologists hands, this idea became a leitmotif, although one had to wait until the 1980s and
after for empirical studies of what came to be called technological development. For an early
discussion of technological development among sociologists, see Jewkes et al. (1958: chapter 8).

33

29

What place does the term and category of innovation take in sociological
theories? In studying the literature, one observes a move from multiple terms used
interchangeably to innovation according to an implicit definition, then to explicit
definitions. In the voluminous literature produced by Ogburn, the most frequent
terms are the combined one invention/discovery and technology. There is no use
of the term innovation until it appears occasionally in both a paper from 1941
(Ogburn, 1941: 3, 14, 18) and the 1950 edition of Social Change (Ogburn, 1950:
378), and then in the title of a chapter (plus p. 710) from the fourth edition of
Sociology (Ogburn and Nimkoff, 1964). Similarly, Gilfillan made no use of the
term, but twice (Gilfillan, 1935: 59; 1937: 20). In the meantime, however, the
term began to appear among other sociologists, at first concurrently with other
terms, like technological change (Stern, 1927, 1937; Chapin, 1928; Davis, 1940).
Then one finds more widespread use of the term (Hart, 1931; Nimkoff, 1957), and
entire theories devoted to innovation (Rogers, 1962).
Innovation, in the hands of Ogburn and his contemporaries, meant many things.
One was simply novelty (Kallen, 1930). In this sense, the use of the term is rare,
and is without real consequences for sociological theories. A second meaning is
social change (Stern, 1927), and this meaning includes more than technological
invention, that is, social invention as repeatedly suggested by Ogburn and some
others (Bernard, 1923; Chapin, 1928: chapter 11; Weeks, 1932), or social
experiments (Chapin, 1917).

34

However, with time, Ogburn and others

sociologists focused more on technological invention, although two authors on

scientific innovation deserves mention (Ben-David, 1960a; 1960b; 1964: 470-76;
1966; Mulkay, 1969; 1972a; 1972b; 1975; Mulkay and Turner, 1971).

35

A third

meaning is the use of (technological) inventions and their social effects (Stern,
1937). For example, to sociologists an innovator is not one who invents but
adopts an invention for the first time. This gave rise to studies on diffusion and to
34

See also the (short-lived) literature on technicways (Odum, 1937; Davis, 1940). On
organizational innovation, see below.
35
To a certain extent, studies on scientific growth (development and diffusion) are concerned with
innovation. For example, see Crane, 1972.

30

a whole literature, often of a quantitative nature, with geometrical laws of

diffusion (Chapin, 1928). This meaning of innovation as technological invention
used and adopted is the common sociological understanding of innovation,
although a fourth meaning would soon be used as well, following the economists
definition (see below): technological invention as commercialized by industry
(Jewkes et al. 1958).
Despite this understanding, explicit definitions of innovation are rare among
sociologists. The early few definitions that exist differ considerably. Certainly,
they all refer to the idea of novelty, but they differ in the sense that some include
the act itself (combination), others the impacts of innovation, still others the
subjective perception of it:
-

Hart (1931): making new working adjustments (combination) among

material and socio-psychological culture

Ogburn (1941): inventions that have served to transform the environment

profoundly

Rogers (1962): an idea, procedure or object perceived as new by its

adopter

What characterizes the sociological literature is that innovation is described as an

activity and as a process where both the production of an invention and its use are
discussed rather than contrasted (Nimkoff, 1957). Invention and imitation (as
adoption or diffusion) are steps in a linear sequence (Table 1).
Innovation as process is also how economists understand the category. However,
economists add their own stamp to the idea: innovation is the commercialization
of (technological) invention. And unlike the definitions of sociologists, this
definition came with time to be accepted among economists, and by others,
including the sociologists.

31

Table 1.
Sociologists Sequences of Innovation

Tarde (1890)
Ogburn (1920)
Bernard (1923)
Chapin (1928)
Ogburn
and Gilfillan (1933)
Gilfillan (1935)
Gilfillan (1937)
US National Resources
Committee (1937)
Ogburn
and Nimkoff (1940)
Ogburn (1941)
Ogburn (1950)
Rogers (1962)
Rogers (1983)

Invention, imitation, opposition

Invention (and diffusion), maladjustment (lag)/adjustment
Formula, blue print, machine 36
Invention, accumulation, selection, diffusion
Idea, trial device (model or plan), demonstration, regular
use, adoption
Idea; sketch; drawing; model; full-size experimental invention;
commercial practice
Thought, model (patent), first practical use, commercial success,
important use
Beginnings, development, diffusion, social influences
Idea, development, model, invention, improvement, marketing
Idea, plan, tangible form, improvement, production, promotion,
marketing, sales
Invention, accumulation, diffusion, adjustment
Innovation, diffusion, adoption 37
Needs/problems, research, development, commercialization, diffusion
and adoption, consequences

The study of change is not the traditional concern of economics. Historically,

economics is concerned with equilibrium rather than dynamics (Veblen, 1898;
Weintraub, 1991). Although the concepts of work (labour), production and
growth held central place in early economic theories, the study of economic
change is not a fundamental concept in economics, as culture change is in
anthropology or as social change is in sociology. Change really got into
economics with the study of technology as a cause of economic growth. Karl
Marx was a forerunner here (Sweezy, 1968; Rosenberg, 1976a). To Marx,
changes in techniques of production gave rise to modern industry. Machines gave

36

For social invention, the stages are: theory, rules, organizations and institutions.
Adoption itself is composed of steps, or stages, as first suggested and popularized by Beal and
Bohlen (1955): awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, adoption.
37

32

rise to 1) the capital-goods sector, and to 2) increases in productivity in other

sectors of the economy. Machines were also a major factor in social change,
through crisis, then through revolution.
However, it is to mainstream economists that we owe the first interest in
technological innovation, then called technological change, as the use of
technological inventions in industrial processes. This literature is often minimized
and contrasted to the later literature from evolutionary economists. However,
from a genealogical point of view, this literature was a first step toward the study
of technological innovation in economics. It was here that (some) interest in
technology began among economists.
Increased interest in technological change can be traced back to the years
following the Great Depression, when the bicentennial debate on the role of
mechanization on employment reemerged. The issue of technological
unemployment gave rise to a series of theoretical classifications of technologies
(as to whether they are labour-saving, capital-saving or neutral) as part of larger
discussions on economic theory (Pigou, 1924: 629-638; Hicks, 1932: 121-125;
Robinson, 1938). The theoretical discussions of the time were very brief (with the
exception of Cambridge economist J. Robinson), until resurrected in the 1960s
under the name induced innovation. In fact, the literature on induced innovation
is probably the first to make extensive use of the term innovation in economics. In
the meantime, the study of technology developed in the 1930s via the
measurement of productivity: increases in productivity as an indicator of
technology usage. Many quantitative studies were published by the US National
Bureau of Economic Research (F.C. Mills, H. Jerome) and public organizations
like the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Work Projects Administration.
Subsequently, formalization of the measurement developed through what was
called the production function.

33

The production function is an equation suggested in the late 1920s that links the
quantity produced of a good (output) to quantities of inputs (Cobb and Douglas,
1928; Douglas, 1948). There are at any given time, or so argue economists, inputs
(labour, capital) available to the firm, and a large variety of techniques by which
these inputs can be combined to yield the desired optimal output. The production
function came to be interpreted as representing technological change, a precursor
term to technological innovation in economics. Economists interpreted
movements in the curve of the production function as technological change (the
substitution of capital for labour), while others equated labour productivity with
technology (technological change is likely to result, all other things being equal,
in increased labour productivity), paving the way for R. Solows influential paper
which equated the residual in the production function with technology (Solow,
1957). Then economists started correlating R&D with productivity measures.
Beginning in the late 1950s, a whole literature developed, analyzing the
contribution of research to industrial development, and to performance,
productivity and economic growth, first from mainstream economists.
The term technological change, already used by sociologist B. J. Stern in 1937,
was popularized by economic historian W. R. Maclaurin from MIT in his
pioneering program of research into the economics of technological change in the
1940s and 1950s (Godin, 2008). Before Maclaurin, the term technological change
appeared sporadically in the economic literature, together with technological (or
technical) progress or advancement, and meant the substitution of capital for labor
as factors in industrial production. In the late 1930s, the US Works Projects
Administration, as part of a project on Reemployment Opportunities and Recent
Change in Industrial Techniques, started using the term technological change
regularly to discuss changes in employment due to technology. Then in the early
1940s, Maclaurin gave the term a new meaning concerned with the development
and commercialization of new products, rather than the use of technical processes

34

in production.

38

By the early 1950s, Maclaurin was using both the term

technological change and technological innovation. This would characterize the

literature for the coming decades.
It is through evolutionary economics, among them J.A. Schumpeter, that
innovation really got into economics. To Schumpeter, capitalism is creative
destruction: disturbance of existing structures, and unceasing novelty and change
(Schumpeter, 1928; 1942; 1947). In his view, innovations are responsible for this
phenomenon. Schumpeter identified five types of innovation (Schumpeter, 1912:
66) in fact, this classification comes from D. Ricardo:

39

1) introduction of a

new good; 2) introduction of a new method of production; 3) opening of a new

market; 4) conquest of a new source of supply of raw materials or halfmanufactured goods; and 5) implementation of a new form of organization.
Part of the explanation for the use of the term innovation in the economic
literature has to do with a reaction against historians and against the term
invention. Following others, Schumpeter distinguished innovation from invention.
To Schumpeter, innovation is possible without anything we should identify as
invention and invention does not necessarily induce innovation (Schumpeter,
1939: 84). Invention is an act of intellectual creativity and is without importance
to economic analysis (Schumpeter, 1939: 85), while innovation is an economic
decision: a firm applying an invention or adopting an invention.

40

However, it

took time for the category to gain acceptance. In the early 1960s, the category was
still not widely accepted. To economist F. Machlup, we shall do better without
the word innovation (Machlup, 1962: 179). To others, the term is in need of a
more rigorous definition, because it has come to mean all things to all men
(Ames, 1961: 371). J. Schmookler, after having defined innovation (Schmookler,
38

Nevertheless, for many years most economists continued to focus on technological change as
processes (used in production), rather than as products (for final consumption).
39
On some of Schumpeters borrowing from the German and Austrian economic literature, see
Streissler (1994) and Reinert (2002).

35

1966: 2), has never used the term but rather invention and technical change. In the
1970s, the skepticism continued: the use of the term innovation is
counterproductive, claimed the authors of a survey conducted for the US
National Science Foundation, because each individual has his or her interpretation
(Roberts and Romine, 1974: 4).

41

For many years, the terms used in the

economic literature were rather invention, technological change (and its variants:
technical advance and technical progress) and sometimes automation.
Schumpeter is usually credited in the economic literature, particularly by
evolutionary economists, as being the first theorist on technological innovation.
This deserves qualifications. Certainly, Schumpeter did develop influential ideas
on technological innovation as a source of business cycles, for example. However,
Schumpeter did follow the literature on technological change and the production
function for defining technological innovation as new combinations of means of
production: innovation as change in the factors of production (input) to produce
products (output) (Schumpeter, 1939: 87s; Lange, 1943). Second, as Maclaurin
(1953) has stated, Schumpeter never developed a theory of technological
innovation. To Schumpeter, the entrepreneur (and, in a next stage, the large firm)
is responsible for technological innovation. But how?
It is really the economic historian Maclaurin, as the very first economic theorist
on technological innovation, who launched the economic study of industrial
research and the commercialization of technological inventions (Godin, 2008).
Studying technological change in its economic dimensions was the task to which
Maclaurin devoted himself entirely from the early 1940s onward. To Maclaurin,
the study of technological change is concerned with factors responsible for the
rate of technological development in industry, and for conditions that are more
conducive to technological progress. From historical analyses of how the process
40

Ten years earlier, the British economist and civil servant Josiah Stamp made a similar
distinction (Stamp, 1929; 1934). For the distinction among German and Austrian economists prior
to Schumpeter, like A.F. Riedel, see Streissler (1994).

36

of technological change takes place, Maclaurin broke down this process into
distinct and sequential steps, from fundamental research to production
engineering, and then to diffusion.
Over time, authors from business schools and economists developed theories or
conceptual models of technological innovation as a process from invention to
diffusion, similar to those of the sociologists (Table 2).

42

In these theories,

technological innovation was defined as a step (the ultimate step) of a process

starting with invention and defined as commercialized innovation. The formal
definition of this comes from Maclaurin, originally as the first commercialization
of a new or improved product or process (Maclaurin, 1953: 105) then as the
whole process, from invention to commercialization to diffusion. From the 1950s,
scholars in technological innovation studies, first among them Carter and
Williams (1957; 1958; 1959), then evolutionary economists (Freeman, 1971;
1974; SPRU, 1972; Nelson and Winter, 1982) developed these ideas further.
In referring to diffusion, the term imitation continued to be used until the 1980s in
the economic literature among its most serious students (Brozen, 1951; Mansfield,
1961; Posner, 1961; Schmookler, 1966; Rosenberg, 1976b; Mansfield et al., 1981;
Nelson and Winter, 1982), while the term was no longer used by sociologists after
Tarde, who turned to the term diffusion. However, to many economists, imitation
or diffusion had a low status in the study of technological innovation. Then
interest in diffusion (as opposed to invention) reached economists from the 1980s
onward. A series of studies appeared suggesting that diffusion was as important to
economic progress as invention itself, if not more so.

41

The same diversity of opinions characterizes the responses to current surveys of innovation from
national statistical bureaus.
42
The steps in the theories of Table 2 vary from psychological steps to organizational steps
(development of new products) to economic steps (production and diffusion).

37

Table 2.
Management and Economists Sequences
of Technological Innovation 43
Mees (1920)
Epstein (1926)
Holland (1928)
Usher (1929)
Jewett (1932)
Stevens (1941)
Bichowsky (1942)
Maclaurin (1947)
Furnas (1948)
Mees and
Leermakers (1950)
Brozen (1951a)
Brozen (1951b)
Maclaurin (1953)
Usher (1954, 1955)
Carter
and Williams (1957)
Enos (1958)
Ruttan (1959)
Ames (1961)
Enos (1962)
Machlup (1962)
Scherer (1965)
Schmookler (1966)
Mansfield (1968; 1971)
Myers and
Marquis (1969)
Rothwell and
Robertson (1973)
Utterback (1974)

Pure science, development, manufacturing

Idea, sketch, drawing, test, use
Pure science research, applied research, invention, industrial research
[development], industrial application, standardization, mass production
Elaboration of the concept, primary synthesis, critical revision 44
Plan (design), control (tests), preliminary small-scale operation, toolmade model, large scale production
Fundamental research, applied research, test-tube or bench research,
pilot plant, production (improvement, trouble-shooting, technical
control of process and quality)
Research, engineering (or development), factory (or production)
Fundamental research, applied research, engineering development,
production engineering, service engineering 45
Exploratory and fundamental research, applied research, development,
production
Research, development (establishment of small-scale use,
pilot plant and models), adoption in manufacturing
Invention, innovation, imitation
Research, engineering development, production, service
Pure science, invention, innovation, finance, acceptance
Perception of an unsatisfied need, setting of the stage, primary act of
insight, critical revision and development
Basic research, applied research, pilot plant, development, production
Invention, development, application
Invention, innovation, technological change
Research, invention, development, innovation
Invention, securing financial backing, establishing an organization,
finding a plant, hiring workers, opening markets, production and
distribution
Basic research, inventive work, development, plant construction
Invention, entrepreneurship, investment, development
Research, development, invention
Invention, innovation, diffusion
Problem solving, solution, utilization, diffusion
Idea generation, project definition, problem solving, design and
development, production, marketing
Generation of an idea, problem-solving or development,
implementation and diffusion

43

Mees, Holland, Jewett and Stevens are industrialists (managers or consultants). They appear
in the list because of their innovativeness and/or influence on business schools and economists.
44
This was only one of Ushers descriptions of the process. Others are: 1) technologies,
consequences, adaptation; 2) discoveries and inventions, synthesis (concept, device), construction
(design); 3) problem, setting of the stage, achievement (configuration).
45
The last term was added in 1949 (Maclaurin, 1949).

38

Theories combining both production (of goods) and distribution have a long
history in economic thought, from Quesnays tableau conomique to A. Smith, D.
Ricardo and K. Marx, then the System of National Accounts. From the 1940s,
such theories were applied to technological innovation. The most popular and
influential is what came to be called the linear model of innovation (Godin,
2006c). The theory suggests that technological innovation starts with basic
research, then goes through applied research, then development, and then
production and diffusion. Such an understanding of technological innovation has
been very influential on science policy after 1945.
While innovation as technological innovation and as commercialized innovation
came to dominate the literature, other conceptions of innovation developed
elsewhere. The category of social innovation (or rather social invention) as such
had few followers but, beginning in the 1920s, researchers have studied
(institutional or) political innovation: innovation in public institutions such as
schools (with P. Mort from Columbia University as the most active researcher)
and government agencies (Chapin, 1928: chapter 11; McVoy, 1940; Walker,
1969; Mohr, 1969).

46

Up to then, most innovation studies have concentrated on

individuals. Then, management and business schools have developed the study of
organizational innovation. First, and following Schumpeter, entrepreneurial
change in firms became a topic of study for which programs of research
developed, for example that of A. H. Coles Research Center in Entrepreneurial
History (1948-58) at Harvard University (Cole, 1959; Aitken, 1965). Second, the
study of innovative behaviours of organizations developed, such as organizational
structure and management style, mainly following T. Burns and G. M. Stalker
the latter a psychologist (Burns and Stalker, 1961; Hage and M. Aiken, 1970;
Zaltman et al., 1973; Wilson, 1966).
Third, the management of research activities, which has been a concern for
industrialists and managers since after World War I (Mees, 1920), gained
46

For a survey of early works, see Savage (1985).

39

increased attention because they contribute to firms performance (productivity,

profits, market share). In this context, (technological) innovation came to be
understood as efficiency: value for money, or the output coming from investments
in R&D. Scientific and technological productivity, or the volume of discoveries
and inventions coming from R&D laboratories, became a subject of study in its
own right. Psychologists were among the firsts to get into this kind of study (Pelz
and Andrew, 1966; Myers and Marquis, 1969). However, it is to the management
of technology (previously called the management of scientific research), together
with accounting (Anthony and Day, 1952) and research evaluation (Rubenstein,
1957; Quinn, 1959; 1960; Hodge, 1963; Horowitz, 1963; Yovits et al., 1966;
Lipetz, 1965; Seiler, 1965; Dean, 1968), that we owe the study of innovation as
efficiency. Researchers began looking at the organizational climate and conditions
most conductive to scientific and technological productivity, and at the incentives
required to encourage creativity. Creativity and productivity became one. In fact,
in the 1960s creativity, a concept of psychological origins, had become a
buzzword, and came to be applied to many facets of industrial research (Steiner,
1965). 47
47

Very rarely have psychologists made use of innovation as a category, except in studies of
organizations (West and Rickards, 1999). They preferred creativity. A genealogy of the concept of
creativity would have to look at genius, then talent (or ability), then intelligence, then creativity. In
fact, the very early studies on imagination from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment were
psychological in kind. However, it was only in the mid-twentieth century that psychologists
themselves started studying creativity (Guilford, 1950). The word creativity itself emerged at
about this time, although create and creation had existed for centuries, as the literature on poetry
and art attests (Tatarkiewicz, 1980; Kristeller, 1983), and creativeness emerged in 1820. To the
psychologists, eminent men, artists, inventors and scientists, were perfect representatives of
creative individuals or geniuses. Creativity was defined here by way of measurement: measuring
the attitudes of individuals and performances to test scores, but also, increasingly, counting the
volume of output produced, or productivity. Beginning with a study published under a pseudonym
in the American Journal of Psychology in 1928, the period in which an individual is more
productive (the creative years as it was called) became a serious topic of discussion (Nelson,
1928). The most active psychologists here were A. Roe, C. W. Taylor, M. I. Stein, H. C. Lehman
and W. Dennis. Many of the studies focused on the study of creativity of personnel in
organizations. A favorite study group was scientists and engineers. Creativity as productivity gave
rise to a whole literature on the counting of scientific papers produced by scientists (Godin,
2006a). These studies were generally funded by government departments, for example the US
Office of Naval Research, the Air Force, NASA, the US National Institute of Health, and by
industries and their associations like the US Industrial Research Institute. Then, in the 1950s and
subsequently, sociologists also got into the study of scientific productivity and its relationship to
recognition and the reward system (B. N. Meltzer, D. Crane, H. Zuckerman and R. K. Merton, S.
Cole and J. S. Cole, P. D. Allison, J. S. Long, J. S. Scott). Let us add that the first psychological

40

What role did policy play in all this? A major one, indeed. Over the twentieth
century, innovation was in fact a policy-driven concept. Psychologists,
sociologists and researchers from management, business schools and economics
acted as consultants to governments, and were concerned with offering policy
recommendations for social engineering, productivity and economic growth
based on their theories, the more recent ones being conceptual frameworks like
the knowledge-based economy, the information economy, the new economy, and
national innovation system (Godin, 2009c). Over the last sixty years, economists,
including evolutionary economists, have been the experts most solicited by
governments. The first among the consulting experts and academic think tanks
were researchers from the US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
(Alchon, 1985) and RAND (Hounshell, 2000),

48

then the Science Policy

Research Unit (SPRU) at Sussex University, Brighton, UK, and the Policy
Research in Engineering, Science and Technology (PREST) group at Manchester
University, UK. In the 1990s, centers on innovation multiplied, such as the
Fraunhofer ISI in Germany and the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on
Innovation and Technology (MERIT) in the Netherlands.
Innovation is also a political concept in another sense. From its very beginning in
the 1960s, science policy has been concerned with funding scientific research,
with technological innovation as the expected output (Godin, 2007b). Over time,
the terms used came to reflect this very first goal. What was called science policy
in the 1960s became science and technology policy in the 1970s, then innovation
policy in the 1990s (Lundvall and Borras, 2005; Branscomb and Keller, 1998:
chapters 5 and 18). However, there has never been a policy for science period,
as many authors argue (OECD, 1963: 18; 1972: 37; Elzinga and Jamison. 1995),
theories on technological inventors were from economic historian A. P. Usher (1929) and US
patent examiner J. Rossman (1931). Rossman is also responsible for a very early survey of
industrial incentives to invention (Rossman, 1935). Rossmans book is also a good indicator of
creativity as buzzword: by the third edition of his book (1964), first published in 1931, J. Rossman
added Industrial Creativity to the previous title The Psychology of the Inventor.

41

only a science for policy one, during which public research and universities
were urged to contribute to technological innovation (Godin, 2009d).

49

Science

policy has always been concerned with applying science to public goals. From its
very beginning, science policy, whether implicit or explicit, was constructed as a
means to achieve social, economic and political goals.
In this quest for technological innovation, statistics has been the best way to
establish evidence. In the academic literature, technological innovation began to
be measured via patents in the 1910s, culminating in the works of economist J.
Schmookler in the 1950s (Schmookler, 1966). Then, it appeared to many that
patent counts measure invention, not (commercialized) innovation. Then
expenditures devoted to R&D came to be used as a proxy, thanks to the
systematic data collected in the then recently-launched survey series from the US
National Science Foundation. This practice then spread to other countries via the
so-called OECD Frascati manual (Godin, 2005). R&D is not a bad proxy of
technological innovation in reality, since two-thirds of R&D expenditures are
devoted to the D (development of new technologies) (Godin, 2006b). Yet an
official study concluded otherwise. In 1967, the US Department of Commerce
published a study, known as the Charpie Report, which was the first governmental
survey of technological innovation per se (US Department of Commerce, 1967).
It showed that R&D does not constitute the main source of technological
innovation. In light of the literature on technological innovation from the 1980s
onward (Freeman, 1994), it appears that the study was correct. But at the time, it
was criticized by economists and statisticians (Mansfield, 1971; Stead, 1976),
among other things because of the definitions and categories used (Kamin et al,
1982) and because the numbers on which the study relied were rule of thumb
figures, so qualified by the authors of the study themselves. Nevertheless, the
48

On an early publication on innovation from these two think tanks, see US National Bureau of
Economic Research (1962).
49
The literature on science policy often contrasts two periods. The first period policy for science
was concerned with funding science for its own sake, the golden age of university funding
according to many researchers, while the second period science for policy in which we now
live, is one where research is supported mainly to achieve political and socioeconomic goals

42

report was quite influential. It contributed to conventionalizing a definition of

innovation as technological innovation and as a process leading to
commercialized innovation. More than twenty years later, the OECD published
the first edition of a methodological manual for measuring innovation, known as
the Oslo Manual (OECD, 1991), which used essentially the same definition as
that in the Charpie Report. The manual, now in its third edition, serves national
statisticians in surveying firms and their innovation activities in a standardized
manner.
Conclusion
In its history, innovation has been broadly conceived and defined. Innovation
concerns any kind of novelty: artistic, scientific, technological, organizational,
cultural, social or individual. As the American anthropologist O. T. Mason put it
in 1895, invention is finding out originally how to perform any specific action by
some new implement, or improvement, or substance, or method (). Every
change in human activity, made designedly and systematically, appears to be an
invention (Mason, 1895: 13-14). To Mason, invention consists in things and
institutions, mental acts involved, rewards and benefits, powers and material of
nature invoked (Mason, 1895: 7; 15). It includes not only things, but languages,
institutions, aesthetic arts, philosophies, creeds, and cults (Mason, 1895: 410).
Innovation, broadly defined, has given rise to many theories and has been
recognized as a key characteristic of the artist (S.T. Coleridge), the inventor (A. P.
Usher), the scientist (J.-B. David; M.J. Mulkay),

50

the entrepreneur and the firm

(J.A. Schumpeter). Innovation has also to a certain extent been recognized as a

key characteristic of the individual in psychology, if not in philosophy and
sociology. Some biologists even attribute innovation to animals (Reader and

50

On a series of early papers on innovation in science covering many disciplines, see the special
issue of Scientific American (1958).

43

Laland, 2003), as H. Bergon attributed it to nature in Lvolution cratrice,

published one hundred years ago (1907).

Historical Conceptions of Innovation

1. Imitation

8. Organizational Change 51

2. Invention

9. Political Innovation

3. Discovery

10.Creativity

4. Imagination

11. Technological Change

5. Ingenuity

12. Technological Innovation

6. Cultural Change

13. Commercialized Innovation

7. Social Change

Over this same history, innovation came to be defined as useful innovation.

According to the sociologist, when used and adopted, an invention becomes an
innovation; to the economist, invention is innovation when commercialized. Here,
the focus of both sociologists and economists theories was technological
innovation. In the collective imaginary, in public representations, in policy, and in
social studies, innovation came spontaneously to be identified with technological
innovation. As sociologist E.M. Rogers put it: the adoption of a new idea almost
always entails the sale of a new product (Rogers, 1962: 261). Many factors
contributed to this shift: the political and economic context, the industrial and
consumer revolutions, the impacts of technologies on individuals and societies,
technology as a source of economic growth and productivity and, above all, the
institutionalization of technological invention via patent laws, and industrial
development through R&D laboratories. To many, innovation thus became an
industrial and economic affair. The innovation surveys conducted by

51

And organizational innovation.

44

governments, of which the OECD Oslo Manual is the emblem, are witness to this
orientation: the measurement of innovation concerns innovation in firms only.
One observes a dialectics here between reality and language. With the changes in
the world came changes in ideas and categories. For example, the material culture
contributed to the rise of innovation as a central category and to a representation
of innovation as technological and commercialized invention. In turn, categories,
as part of representations, discourses, laws and policies, theories and statistics
make events visible, bring to light novelties and changes in the world, and
contribute to these changes. To paraphrase D.A. Schon, innovation came to be
seen as the instrument of growth, and growth as the occasion for and object of
innovation (Schon, 1967: 54).
Innovation as a (widely-used) category during the twentieth century is witness to
a certain context or era - capitalism - and to changes in political values. As J. Farr
put it, to understand conceptual change is in large part to understand political
changes (Farr, 1989: 25). Until early in the twentieth century, invention,
ingenuity and imagination were discussed as symbols of civilization and as
attributes of geniuses, and their contribution to the progress of the race. Then, the
growing role of organizations in the twentieth century led to changes in values. If
there was to be increasing economic efficiency, there had to be innovation through organizations and the mobilization of their employees creative abilities.
52

Such were the discourses of managers as well as policy-makers. Theorists from

many disciplines started studying innovation in terms of the effects of

technological innovation on the economy and society. To sociologists, gone was
the lonely inventor as a hero or genius. It was a myth created by past authors.
Innovation is rather a social process. To economists, gone was invention without
market value. It is a subject for the historian. To the policy-maker, gone was (or
should be) research with no application. The golden age between the state and the
funding of the basic scientist, although short-lived, is finished. Innovation as a
52

For a similar shift in context and its impact on statistics on science, see Godin (2007a).

45

category in the twentieth century expresses precisely these political changes: a

demarcation with past understandings, values and practices. The categorys
previous meanings or predecessors (invention, ingenuity, imagination, etc.) came
to be subsumed under innovation, and the creative abilities of an individual
placed in the service of organizations, industrial development and economic
growth.
Innovation is the last of a series of terms imagined to give meaning to modern
practices. Certainly, innovation is, to a certain extent, continuity with the past, in
the sense that more often than not it refers to technological invention. However, it
is also a break with the past: invention per se is not enough (Levitt, 1963). In fact,
many ideas and inventions fail, according to the history of technology. There has
to be use of the invention, namely innovation, in order for benefits to accrue. This
is the first aspect of the break. Another concerns the production of invention.
While it was the individual, or genius, who was the source of invention in
previous representations, innovation places emphasis on the firm. And there is a
third aspect of the break: benefits deriving from invention concern economics, not
culture or civilization.
There are now many people trying to broaden the understanding of innovation as
technological innovation. One now hears discourses on social innovation,
meaning either major advances in the social sciences (Deutsch et al., 1971; 1986),
policy/institutional reforms for the betterment of society (Gabor, 1970), or
solutions to social needs and problems, coming from the community sectors
among others (Goldenberg, 2004; Mulgan, 2007; Mulgan et al., 2007). 53 Calls for
do-it-yourself

innovation,

user-led

innovation,

open

innovation

and

democratizing innovation are in the same vein: technological innovation comes

from many sources, not only the research laboratory, but also users (Chesbrough,
53

Recently, R. R. Nelson has re-labeled institutions as social technologies (Nelson, 2008;

Nelson and Sampat, 2001). Nelsons rhetorical move is motivated (to my mind) by his
insistence on trying to persuade economists to better integrate the role of institutions in economic
theories. The term technology may convince economists more than institution does. In the

46

2003; Hippel, 2005; Flowers, 2008). One also hears discourses on the creative
class, which includes the bohemians such as artists and designers (Florida,
2002), and the creative industries, as a category in need of statistical, economic
and policy recognition (Bakhshi et al., 2008). 54 The OECD Oslo Manual itself, in
its latest edition, has broadened the definition of innovation to include
organizational and marketing innovation, although this is limited to firms.
However, projects are now in progress for measuring innovation in the public
sectors in the near future.
The main goal of the promoters of these new ideas is ensuring that policy-makers
takes account of non-technological aspects of innovation in their policy. Whether
the ideas will have an impact on the current understanding of innovation remains
to be seen. For the moment, they certainly contribute to extending the discourses
on, and the fascination with, innovation to more spheres of society, and
mobilizing more people in the name of innovation.

1970s, S. Kuznets already was using social technology and social innovation in this sense
(Kuznets, 1978).
54
On a recent tentative to introduce the term innovation in the field of fine arts, see Oakley et al
(2008).

47

Appendix.
The Vocabulary of Innovation
(ACT)

(SOURCE)

(EFFECTS)

Imitation
Invention
Discovery
Experiment/Investigation
Initiative
Praxis/action
Change
Creation/Creativity
Production (tive)
Novation/Innovation

Inspiration
Ingenuity
Curiosity
Imagination
Reason (logic)

Culture
Civilization
Evolution
Modernity/Progress
Advancement
Improvement
Development
Revolution

Associated terms:
originality, freedom,
expression, will, choice
opinion

Novelty

The following concerns TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION

Art/craft
Craftsman
Artificial
Artisan
Project
Maker
Mechanics
Architect
Machine/Machinery
Projector
Tool/Instrument/
Undertaker
Device/Engine
Technician
Technique
Engineer
Technology
Entrepreneur
Automation/Mechanization Business/Industrious
Capital/Equipment
Merchant
Constructing/Manufacturing Laboratories
Product/Process
Methods
Fabricating (fabrica)/Making
Applications

Useful
Practical
Improvement
Growth/Productivity
Performance
Competitiveness
Leadership
Benefits
Gain
Output
Efficiency/
Effectiveness
Power/safety/
Comfort
Prosperity
Well-being/
Wealth
Returns
Employment
Savings
Standards (or
conditions) of
living
Leisure

48

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Anthony, R. N., and J. S. Day (1952), Management Controls in Industrial
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